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Abstract
Maxims are famous for their moral pronouncements, yet La Rochefoucauld's Maximes (1678) have become infamous for offering little moral guidance. Morally ambivalent at best, the Maximes are also less known for their other forms of ambivalence, whether rhetorical, psycho-logical, anthropological or linguistic. Such are the four directions taken by this study to explore four of the most prevalent themes in La Rochefoucauld's masterpiece: honnête homme, amour-propre, love and fortune.
Rhetorically, the Maximes seem to have been born of ambivalence, especially as they pertain to the key figure of irony, and especially as this irony applies to the definition of honnête homme. However, just as La Rochefoucauld's honnête homme finds a double in the form of the habile homme, the antiphrastic irony of his writing often spills into a number of figurative dou-bles, such as the bipolar structures of antithesis and ellipsis.
Psychologically, La Rochefoucauld's personal obsession with amour-propre also trans-lates into a complex web of "psychovectorial" ambivalences. By applying Hunter Shirley's theory of emotional ambivalences to the Maximes, the second chapter demonstrates how amour-propre seldom functions as a pure emotion, but how it combines with a set number of fears and aggressions to reveal a far more complex characterization of human pride. Anthropologically, La Rochefoucauld reinforces his ambivalent clarity through "cooking up" a triangular discourse on love. Using Claude Lévi-Strauss's "culinary triangle", the third chapter investigates how, despite a clear polarization between "putrid" forms of passion and more sophisticated or "cooked" forms of friendship, love in the Maximes prefers to dwell in the more ambivalent hinterlands of mixed love, one of which being "raw" libertinage.
Linguistically speaking, the Maximes finally reach a climax of ambivalence in their sys-tematic use of modalities, particularly as these modalities pertain to the discourse on fortune. Clearly, La Rochefoucauld seems loathe to dispel the providential influence of "destiny," but his definition of fortune appears to shift towards "accidents" or "chance" ("hasard"), not to mention skywards to the "stars" ("étoiles") of a more aristocratic compromise with death.
In the end, La Rochefoucauld's complex ambivalences remain extremely reserved, as his Maximes seem to purposely fall into silence.
